With three more mills yet to be revived in Ahmedabad, National Textile Corporation (NTC) is mulling setting up of a technical textile plant in one of them.
The Ministry of Textiles, along with NTC is planning to set up in all 12 technical textiles plants across the country, one of which is likely to come up in Ahmedabad.
"We are conducting a techno-economic analysis of developing technical textiles plants in verticals like geo textiles, medical textiles and industrial textiles. Since we are planning to set up 12 such plants across the country, one of them is likely to come up in Ahmedabad. The decision is still pending with the Board," said a ministry official. After several mills having been auctioned, there are still three mills viz. Rajnagar Mills, Viramgam Mills and Petlad Mills yet to be auctioned or modernised.
Ministry of Textiles and NTC are planning to set up the plants on a public private partnership (PPP) mode. For this, expression of interests (EoIs) were invited resulting in 18 companies from around the world showing interest in the project.
"Of the 18 EoIs received, six EoIs are from India, while rest are from France, UK, US, Japan and Germany. The Board is now examining capability and accountability of these parties before referring finalised names to the Ministry of Textiles and BIFR who will take a final call," the official added while refusing to divulge investment details.
What's more, if required the company will also look to set up a plant on a greenfield land. However, according to the official, NTC has over 1,200 acres of land in various cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Indore, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and some other cities in Karnataka.
Earlier in January this year, NTC wrapped up sale of its two closed mills in Gujarat for a combined price of Rs 145.93 crore against a total reserve price of Rs 68.74 crore. NTC had initiated a three-day e-auction on December 29, 2010 of a 33,222 sq mts plot of New Manekchowk Textile Mills in Ahmedabad and 61,040 sq mts of land belonging to the closed Mahalaxmi Textile Mills at Bhavnagar.
It was the third auction by the NTC after it took the trend-setting e-route to sell of the surplus lands. In the first e-auction held from July 29, the company garnered Rs 474 crore for 2.3-acre Poddar Mill land in Mumbai, against the reserve price of Rs 250 crore. Likewise, the 8.3 acre land of Bharat Textile Mills at Worli in Mumbai was sold for a whopping Rs 1,505 crore against the reserve price of Rs 750 crore, in the second round of online auction from August 4 to 6 last year.